COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN
"How the
oligarchy wins..."
"... two recent
books can teach us about defending democracy from oligarchs'
I'm sorry, but this is just not possible, at least not
without something close to a revolution.
In every Western country we like to call a democracy, the
truth is that they have only an elaborate stage set of democracy.
I prefer the term "plutocrat" to
"oligarch," but whatever word you choose to use, the facts of society
are the same.
Power, no matter how it is granted, is power.
And money is power, serious power.
We can see this in a thousand aspects of our societies from
the long-term success of someone like Harvey Weinstein in business to the many
powerful lobbies which determine the direction of national policy.
In the United States, the last national election was between
a multi-billionaire and the best financed candidate in history, a woman who
burnt through somewhere between $1.2 billion and $1.8 billion to lose.
It has been studied, and the fact is that members of the
American Senate spend about two-thirds of their time raising money.
The American House of Representatives actually has call
rooms were Representatives spend time every week raising money.
And when I say “raising money” I don’t mean the
contributions which come from the likes of you or me. I mean big money from big
sources of money, the only ones who really count.
Look at a phenomenon like Macron in France. He came from
nowhere and seems to have very limited talents, yet the plutocratic interests
who backed him managed to grab the French Presidency.
Former French President Sarkozy, a man who proved mostly
ineffective, took huge sums from General Gaddafi to the richest woman in
France, a woman rumored to not have been even fully competent at the time.
Not only are the contributors of big money - both
individuals and lobby groups - at the center of Western politics, but our very
institutions are constructed to accommodate leadership which does not reflect
the views of a majority. This is done in many structural ways from district
gerrymandering to the nature of the “first past the post” ballots we use.
Look at Britain's most utterly incompetent modern
politician, David Cameron, the man who single-handedly created the entire
Brexit mess plus engaged in a terrible lot of dishonest and brutal behavior in
the Middle East. He was never popular and ruled with something over 35% of the
vote. Britain’s institutions accommodated that.
In Canada, Stephen Harper, the man most Canadians likely
regard as the shabbiest ever to rule the country, managed to do terrible things
with about 39% of the vote.
And everywhere, people don't vote for war, interests do,
rich interests, and they get what they want.
_____________________
Response to another
comment saying oligarchs may be better than democracy sometimes:
Yes, but the fundamental issue has always been, how do you
choose the oligarch and how do you get rid of one who is clearly badly failing
or abusing power?
Democracy is a compromise, but it is one that virtually no
one argues against. At least leaders are obliged to leave periodically.
Churchill had it right when called democracy the worst form
of government except for all the others.
Oligarchy clearly serves some developing countries well,
always assuming the oligarchs are people dedicated to doing their best for the
country as a whole. And they do do that sometimes.
Yet, we have supported nonsense like killing a Gadhafi, who
gave his people good government and peace, and pitching Libya into chaos.
All in the name of democracy from our dishonest
"democratic" politicians.
Look at Israel, always slapping itself on the back as the
Mideast's "only democracy," while it consorts happily with kings and
tyrants in its neighborhood and continues to hold millions of people in
occupation against their will.
